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Eclipse Phase: Prophet’s Hope

A group of gatecrashers are sent on a scouting mission to an exoplanet relatively near to our own solar system. The planet has favorable atmospheric conditions and life, but something is off about it. There seems to be a human settlement on the planet, one unknown to transhumanity. They have medieval technology but are otherwise healthy. Furthermore, there are strange four-legged beasts roaming the nearby wilderness. What secrets does this world hold? Is it a TITAN trap? No trace of their technology or the Exsurgent virus has been found, but who knows what secrets lie hidden, just waiting for the gatecrashers to find?

QE transmitters don’t actually have a signal at all, although they’re such bullshit pseudoscience anyway that it’s kinda pointless to worry about how they work. Spukhaftevernwirkung can’t really be used to communicate, except to communicate that you know the best word ever invented. but it does enable certain reasonably interesting plots, so I FORGIVE YOU ECLIPSE PHASE EVEN THOUGH YOU’RE PUNCHING ME IN THE SCIENCE.

I was actually reminded of the Area X trilogy, with the whole “people becoming the environment” thing. Area X was…far more inexplicable, though. weird books. think it was someone on the RPPR Facebook group who got me to read them, and to that man I say…um…well, I did do it!

uwtartarus

January 23, 2016 at 5:05 pm

Area X was so weird.

Nick

January 25, 2016 at 7:11 am

Great episode with Gatecrashers, the Heretic got his wish though so that was good. I wish we heard more about his back-story though and how he survived so long.

Enjoyed it!

Matz05

January 25, 2016 at 12:15 pm

I guess the REALLY scary thing is that the Prophet is probably not (though very well could be) Exurgent, but just… misguided, naive, and probably a bit mad from isolation and boredom.
Instead of your usual reality-breaking cosmic horror, it’s just a run-of-the-mill mad god. Oh wait, that’s also very bad…

Who’s idea was it to confine something smarter than all the NASA staff put together in a tin can in the void for all those years, with nothing for stimulation but planning the ‘next big thing’ for a bunch of (frozen? uploaded?) colonists without actually interacting with them? That seems to be just asking for a socially maladjusted superintelligence.

Without sufficient first-hand experience with human behavior and philosophy, it might not grasp the finer points of ideas like consent and self-determination, or the importance humans place on the whole ‘reason, communication, tool-use’ package, or the way that humans of all kinds claim positions of various sorts, but balk at taking their own ideologies to logical extremes, preferring to take more easily adaptable half-measures instead.

With a mandate to innovate for the sake of the mission’s success, but nobody available to provide feedback on the value or implications of innovations, or provide opinions on the direction of its development, they essentially gave it a blank check on interpreting the mission parameters and deciding the future of the colony, putting its vision ahead of that of the colonists.

Did they WANT a robot-god-emperor-led hippie dictatorship, with the theory that such a society would prove resilient to threats both internal and external?
Did they just underestimate the… creativity… of self-improving intelligences?
The secrecy surrounding the flight makes me think the colony might have been intended as a ‘backup’ for the rapidly destabilizing pre-Fall society, given that Earth politics were already messed up enough that THERMONUCLEAR SPACE FIREWORKS could be explained away as military posturing.

…I really need to use the term ‘thermonuclear space fireworks’ more often.

James

January 27, 2016 at 1:13 am

Salty Caleb is quite possibly the best flavor of rppr

Tom

January 27, 2016 at 8:29 pm

This should be a new thing–one-shot Gatecrashing with rotating GMs. You could even troupe play it up with each person having a couple of characters to choose from depending on the mission (each one could focus more on combat/investigation/social/whatever). Plus you could release them on whatever schedule you feel like–illness or no.

Ethan C.

January 27, 2016 at 9:23 pm

Fun one. Solid group of characters all around, and a good plot that kept ’em guessing for quite some time. Hoplite Squirrell, Robo-Contrarian, and Bored O’l Geezer make a crack team.

Good job running it, Tom. I’ve noticed that you really like your unnervingly-calm-talky villains, but this one was pretty effective.

RCB

February 2, 2016 at 2:16 pm

Great game. Of course, the Canticle for Leibowitz reference alone made it worthwhile.

BellaJen

February 8, 2016 at 7:34 pm

Cool game, very much enjoyed it. I liked the whole idea of the branch off seed AI that never knew about everything that actually happened back on Earth.
Loved the mental image of a flying squirrel with a tiny agonizer.
Fun game all around, really cool.

DiploRaptor

February 13, 2016 at 1:25 pm

Great little scenario and tons of fun.
I agree more horse people. Also that ending… whelp we are sitting here for however many years… great. Oh I don’t think you can use a QE like that at all I’m fairly cure they are a one and done or I could be thinking of a different QE implant.